Twitter has announced it is cracking down on QAnon, the far-right conspiracy theory movement (via NBC News).
The company has banned 7,000 accounts known to be related to the movement, and has taken steps to limit the reach of around 150,000 more by blocking link sharing of content, and removing related accounts and content from search and trending topics.
Twitter confirmed the move itself in a lengthy Twitter thread:
We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension — something we’ve seen more of in recent weeks.
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) July 22, 2020
QAnon grew from the Pizzagate conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of a pizza restaurant.
It is a movement borne of the claims of the anonymous ‘Q’, “who claims knowledge of a secret cabal of powerful pedophiles and sex traffickers” according to The Guardian. Its theories are wide-ranging and include the assertion that Donald Trump is secretly bringing down this activity with his erratic presidency.
Twitter’s confident move to ban QAnon activity on its platform shows far more action than Facebook, where conspiracy theories tend to blossom unchallenged by any kind of rational moderation. Twitter’s move is presumably to counteract misinformation particularly in the Presidential Election run-in.
While the move has been met positively, it remains to be seen how effectively Twitter can police its own rules.
Author: Henry Burrell, Phones Editor
Henry is Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, ensuring he and the team covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about for readers and viewers all over the world. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.